(Adds share price move in paragraph 5; comments in paragraph 3, 12; details about PBF's refining operation in paragraphs 7-9)

May 2 (Reuters) -

Oil refiner PBF Energy beat Wall Street's first-quarter profit estimates on Thursday, helped by sustained demand for refined products even as maintenance work kept U.S. fuel supplies tight.

Adjusted profit of 85 cents per share for the three months ended March 31 surpassed analysts' average estimate of 66 cents, LSEG data showed.

"Increasing consumer demand during the quarter helped strengthen the markets as we progressed from the mild winter into spring," PBF CEO Matt Lucey said during the Parsippany, New Jersey-based company's call on Thursday.

However, consolidated gross margin per barrel of throughput fell to $2.68 in the January-March quarter from $7.53 last year.

PBF's shares rose 0.77% shortly before midday.

Global fuel supplies have remained tight as refiners underwent heavy maintenance work during the quarter to prepare equipment for high demand in the summer driving season and as Ukrainian drone attacks caused outages at refineries in major producer Russia.

PBF's refineries on the East Coast and Mid-continent regions underwent significant planned maintenance during the quarter but are expected to have a clean run for the rest of the year.

Planned maintenance at the Martinez, California, refinery has started and is expected to be completed in the second quarter.

PBF said its six refineries would have a total throughput of 900,000 barrels per day at the midpoint, or around 90% of combined capacity, in the second quarter of 2024.

Its first-quarter crude oil and feedstocks throughput rose 5.4% to 897,400 bpd.

U.S. product supplied, a proxy for demand, remained stable, averaging at 20.10 million barrels per day (bpd) at the end of March, compared with 19.7 million bpd a year earlier, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data.

"PBF beat consensus estimates, which should be taken positively in light of recent misses from large cap peers," TD Cowen analyst Jason Gabelman said in a note.

Phillips 66 reported a first-quarter earnings

miss

last week.

(Reporting by Arunima Kumar in Bengaluru and Nicole Jao in New York; Editing by Devika Syamnath and Richard Chang)